Bernhard Mahler, the pedlar's son and the composer's father, elevated himself to the ranks of the petite bourgeoisie by becoming a coachman and later an innkeeper. [3] He bought a modest house in the village of Kalischt ( Kaliště ), halfway between Prague in Bohemia and Brno in Moravia , in the geographic center of today's Czech Republic. Bernhard's wife, Marie (Herrmann), [4] gave birth to the first of the couple's 14 children, a son Isidor, who died in infancy. Two years later, on 7 July 1860, their second son, Gustav, was born. [5]